Snow White’s Journey Through Time
Often when many of us think of the story
of Snow White, we commonly picture a host of cartoon characters, more
specifically dwarfs singing “Heigh-Ho” and marching along to work. This is a
common conception considering that many Americans today have grown up with
release after release of Disney’s classic cartoon film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which was first featured in 1937.
What most of us don’t realize is this particular story is a tale with quite a
rich history reaching back a thousand years into ancient times.
There are in fact quite a few versions of
Snow White which present themselves as we see the story progress over time to
adapt to a changing period and audience. It seems as if tales which were at one
time told by an orator and then written down through the ages from one version
to another would be expected to change only by the nature of being passed down.
In this case, Snow White is certainly no exception to this rule. What makes
Snow White impressive in this aspect is that while changing the perception of
how the female character is represented in the text ultimately some parts of
the story remain the same. With this Fairy Tale History paper, I will examine
the perception of the Snow White character in four versions of the story. I
will use excerpts from ancient Roman mythology, the Brothers Grimm fairy tale
library, and Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to show how the female
character is portrayed across each of these time periods.
If we look back far enough into Greek and
Roman mythology, we find a character who was named Chione. Chione, in classical
mythology, was the “daughter of Daedalion” (Grant and Hazel). Her name means
snow or snow princess who was chiōn in Greek (Grant and Hazel). In the
collection of The Metamorphosis by
Ovid, there was a story of Daedalion which tells of his life and family. As I
mentioned earlier Chione, his daughter, was known in this story as “most
lovely” and by age fourteen “was already sought by as many as a thousand men”
(Ovid 372). We see the first interesting parallel to many of the stories of
Snow White in this passage, a woman of great beauty, possibly the fairest in
the land considering thousands of men sought to gain her affection.
The gods will have a part to play with
this story, however, in the form of Phoebus and Mercury if you are Roman or
Apollo and Hermes if you are referencing Greek mythology. Both Phoebus and
Mercury were struck by the young woman Chione’s stunning beauty, so they
decided to rape her. Mercury would “with his wand that brings sleep” put the
girl into a deep sleep and have his way with her (Ovid 372). Phoebus used an
“old woman’s guise” to infiltrate the young lady’s living quarters (Ovid 372).
In the end, Phoebus/Apollo would father a son with Chione by the name of Autolycus
(Ovid 373). It is in this part where we see the second similarity to modern
versions of Snow White. Mercury waved his wand and puts Chione to sleep, a deep
sleep sort of like the apple does in more contemporary versions.
Finally, we see that there is yet another
conflict with a God in store for Chione. All of this fame for Chione did not
spell a happy ending for the old version of Snow White. Chione advertised that
she was more beautiful than even the goddess Diana and this naturally upset her
divinity. Diana retaliated by firing an arrow down from the heavens to pierce
Chione’s tongue, which led to her silence and death (Ovid 373). Here we see the
third parallel to the modern story of the struggle for the fairest in the land.
Chione boasts that she is the fairest in the land and was struck down because
of it. If we examine at the female character of Chione and how she is treated
by the gods we also see a possible interpretation of the way Greek and Roman
society looked at women. First, the marrying age was fourteen, which of course
by today’s standards this would be too young to be considered a woman. Second,
we see that the gods have their way with the young heroine, but this doesn’t
seem to necessarily be a bad thing because of the procreation of a child at
least according to the story. The god’s bad behavior was excused because they
are gods and it seems partly because they are male as well.
In the Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, the main character is
portrayed as an innocent girl “who was white as snow, red as blood, and black
as ebony” this describing her skin, cheeks, and hair (Tartar 249). The Huntsman
is assigned to kill snow white in this version and bring back her lungs and
liver as proof of her death (Tatar 251). This task is given to the Huntsman by
the Queen who desires to be the fairest in all the land. This is similar to the
quarrel of Diana and Chione in the first version, although there is a new
twist. Instead of Chione boasting, we have a magic mirror which tells the Queen
who the fairest is.
The Grimm version also has a multitude of
characters to introduce compared to earlier versions. Besides the Huntsman, we
also have the dwarfs and a prince who comes to Snow White’s rescue in the end.
The Queen, instead of using a direct method of killing Snow White, used lace to
cut off “Snow White’s breath” a “poisoned comb” to put her in a coma induced
state, and finally “an apple full of poison” to ensure that the deed was done
(Tatar 255-257). None of these methods are successful unfortunately for the
Queen because the Prince ultimately saves Snow White. He orders his men to lift
up the coffin, and this dislodges the piece of poison apple from Snow White’s
throat bringing her back to life again (Tatar 260). So there is a happy ending
for Snow White in this version, but death by dancing in heated iron slippers
for the Queen (Tatar 261). This outcome is entirely opposite from the ancient
Greek/Roman version where Snow White perishes from an arrow shot by the Queen
like character. We do see a coma induced by three different methods, however,
but there is no child conceived by rape during the coma. It is probably safe to
say that by the time of the Brothers Grimm version in the 1850s that rape is
more frowned upon, however, the hands-off stance by the male and female
characters in their approaches to parenting is not.
Walt Disney’s account to the story of Snow
White is similar to the Brothers Grimm version with a few adaptations. For
instance, the Queen calls upon the Huntsman to kill Snow White just like the
Grimm version but tells him to “bring back her heart in this,” holding up a red
box with a dagger through a heart on the front of it (Disney). Of course to be
a Disney classic you have to incorporate some catchy musical numbers into the
story. Even if you don’t remember the particulars of the story, you remember
the songs. It is in this that you find some of the contributions to the story
from the time when the movie was made in 1937. Snow White stumbled across the
dwarf’s house, which was in shambles a sty, and employed her animal tag team
entourage in household chores using the “whistle while you work” tune to
motivate them. The dwarfs which become the main characters, along with the
wicked Queen, also have a very catchy tune in “heigh-ho, it’s off to work we
go” (Disney).
Other differences in this version of Snow
White include the pursuit of the Queen disguised as an old woman up a mountain
onto a cliff by the dwarfs. As she tries to dislodge a boulder from a cliff
onto the dwarfs the part of the mountain is struck by lightning, and she falls
to her death (Disney). We also see that the Queen doesn’t attempt to kill Snow
White herself on multiple occasions with the lace, comb, and apple so on and so
forth. It is just the method of the poison apple which the Queen proceeded to
put Snow White in eternal sleep with. From this Snow White can only be saved by
“loves first kiss” according to the spell book of the Queen (Disney).
There are obvious similarities between all
three versions of the Snow White story which I have represented. Chione in
definition means snow in Greek. The ancient and modern versions both have a
girl who is gorgeous and in some versions sought after many. There is a jealous
Queen or God who attempts to harm the Snow White character. These are also
different because meant for a changing audience if older we see more mature and
the Disney version is apparently intended to be a children’s story. The
contemporary versions are supposed to teach about the importance of hard work.
If we took the Disney version in 1937, we are talking about America during the
depression.
If we use the Aarne/Thompson model of
classification for these last two renditions of Snow White, they would fit into
the AT709 type fairy tale (377). That is the evil stepmother wants to kill a
young maiden, at the dwarfs’ house and a prince finds the heroine and saves her
(Aarne and Thompson 377). By this, we see that throughout the time the story
has changed, yet the bare bones stayed the same. The story of Snow White, as well
as many other fairy tales, will more than likely continue to adapt and change
depending on our values and perspectives over time. It is fascinating to see
just how the stories have progressed and will deviate from the original version
because of this shift.
Work
Cited
Aarne,
Antti, and Stith Thompson. “From The
Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography.” latech.edu, http://moodle.latech.edu/pluginfile.php/1462596/mod
_resource/content/0/From%20The%20Types%20of%20the%20Folktale%20-%20Aarne%20%20Thompson.pdf.
Bauer.
Diana and Chione. The University of
Vermont College of Arts and Sciences. The
University of Vermont, https://www.uvm.edu/~classics/slides/c085.jpeg.
Accessed 16 April 2017.
Disney,
Walt. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
YouTube, Disney Movies on Demand, 30 November 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnkf6gZ5GDY.
Grant,
Michael, and John Hazel. “Chione.” Who’s
Who in Classical Mythology, Routledge, 3rd edition, 2002, http://ezproxy.latech.edu:2048/login?qurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch
.credoreference.com%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2Froutwwcm%2Fchione%2F0%3FinstitutionId%3D3454.
Ovid.
The Metamorphosis of Ovid. Translated
by Allen Mandelbaum, Harcourt, 1993.
Tatar,
Maria, editor. “Snow White.” The
Annotated Brothers Grimm. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017,
pp.246-261.
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